My conversion to Christ in January, 1940, was soon followed by an awakening to the world, the world of human and spiritual need. The church I joined was committed to the commission of Jesus Christ to go to the world with the gospel. Jesus commanded the disciples, and those who would believe on him through their word, to go to the world with what he had given them. So they went, and the story is magnificent in the masses with forward movement in the centuries since. Christ attached his personal relationship to Christians with his mandate for world witness.
The command was on, not related to physical arms of warfare, but in the peace of missionaries that faith in Christ, shown in redemption, was vital to gain immortality. The viewpoint was often taken as an offense to installed cultures, including religions, to the point that missionaries have engaged dangerous appointments, even to martyrdom. More of my friends and students have lost their lives in the cause of this mission than those persons I have known who gave their lives in warfare. Nearly all missionaries I knew were empathetic, in human meaning and spiritual. As servants of the people, respecting rights to make self-decisions, they helped others through psychological and physical ordeals of daily life. The list of contributions made by missionaries from the hopeful message that God loves all persons, to healing the sick, to digging in the soil for pools of water to grow crops – is a long list. The missionaries received low pay and many had to raise their own monetary support (as many still do). With few exceptions they serve humbly, and with modest reward, except for the honor of serving the cause of Jesus Christ in concern for mankind, and the command of Christ. Writers may disregard the larger story, and try to tar the magnificent missionary movement of history with words like those of Paul Theroux, words challenged by a secular reviewer of one of his articles: As he often does, Theroux saves his worst venom for missionaries. In the Buddhist nation of Thailand he meets a Christian whom he describes as an oversized mongrel worrying a bone. Counter that opinion with the closing sentences of an article in the magazine, The Atlantic, an article in which the writer discussed the arrogance and problems related to nations in the Indian Ocean region. He wrote: The struggle . . . may, alas, come down to who deals more adroitly with the Burmese hill tribes. It is the kind of situation that the American missionaries of yore knew how to handle. The reporter implied that nations would be helped to learn how missionaries do it. Well and rightly written, and that in a secular source.
Crowds of people have been sheltered in warfare by missionaries; children and women have been protected from predators; improved living conditions have been introduced; wells of water have been dug with pumps installed; and, so the story goes. The missionary is one of God’s gifts to the world. Honor to the memory of Bob Ziemer (cut down by machine gun bullets while trying to save lives), like the Johnsons (she at the organ and he at the pulpit in a foreign land), like Paul Carlson (a few feet from safety after incarceration in Africa), five men on the Curaray River (taking the gospel to the Waorani), and an army of others, some friends of mine (including those above), who gave their lives, asking for no reprisal. What of their families? We owe an eternal salute. And, we have not accented adequately the main point – they were carrying a message of hope and meaning to populations that had been fed on hopelessness, hunger, denial and often virtual slavery. Those missionaries wanted only good for their people. One said in my hearing: I would gladly change my loved country and race to remain with my people. He had been forced by warfare to leave Africa and return to America. His tears fell as he spoke. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020